We have an apartment near the British Museum in London. It is like having an apartment in Time Square NYC. We have a back court yard - we plan to have parties here.
Our building is a "5 floor townhouse walk-up." We have the ground and first floors. That is our kitchen on the upper left - the glass door is our dining room - those two rooms down the steps are bedrooms. The place sleeps 8 and has 3 sofas "just in case."
The weather has really improved over the last 3 days - we have 80s and sunny now - not a hint of rain.
It is 8 miles from our apartment to Olympic Stadium. I wish I had a press pass - because they have closed off our street to cars because that is where the media folks will be boarding for an express trip out to the action. I tried to get our local newspaper to sponsor me but no luck. All I wanted was a press pass - I would have given them all the pictures - video - copy - that they could have handled.
We are close to the theatre district - less than 1 mile. As a result we went to several shows. We have seen - Chariots of Fire - We Will Rock You - and a few others. Last night we went to Leicester Square to see if we could pick up some discount tickets. It is like Broadway NYC back home. We walked into a movie house with about 10 little theaters in it. I do not know how it happened but we accidentally got by the ticket collector. When we went upstairs to buy a ticket - we were already in the theater. So we sat down and watched the movie. At first we thought it was free movie night :-) So far we have not paid more than 30 pounds ($45) for a play/show ticket. The theaters are small and so far we sat in the front row or close to it - every time.
Things are picking up now. Today is the first day they are enforcing the Olympic traffic lanes. It is a stiff fine to be caught in one of the lanes. Even bikers must stay out of them.
Son Drew is here now with his family. Son Keith comes tomorrow. Keith already bought us seats for the Opening Ceremony.He bought them over some web page from America. I honestly have a feeling that there will be lots of cheap tickets for preliminary events.
Cindy Miller - former Tamaqua High School basketball star - is here. She is vice president of United Parcel Service - Northern Europe. She is in charge of the logistics of the Olympics. She is once busy lady.
One of my tenants from FSU is coming here with her family. Her sister Amy Tran is the goalie for the USA Field Hockey Team. Katy and her family are staying here at the FSU London Centre.
The subway workers have already threatened a strike - the immigration workers also made the threat but then relented. Eveyrbody is working hard to clean up over here - really pushing the deadines. The manager of our apartment building decided to paint the building exterior. They just put up 5 floors of scaffolding this morning - outside our bedroom windows.
Lulu decided yesterday we must go to Alda (Walmart) to stock up for the games. The Alda store is about 3 miles away by bus. I saw this deal for cell phone service - it looked pretty good. I did not buy it.
I just read the BBC web page that said they have set up a network of free wifi for everybody downtown. It will stay up even after the Olympics. FREE WIFI.
Alda (Walmart) has a good phone deal. For 10 pounds ($15) you get unlimited texts - 100 minutes of calls - and 100MB of Internet. No need for a contract - by it month by month. I chuckled because the manager lady admonished me with "no pictures." She made me erase my picture - duh - I snapped two. Hasn't she ever seen the "things people wear to Walmart " web pages?
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